David Brown's Free Play | Puzzles, Horror and Zomgies

Promising last week that this would be the end of us featuring games with zombies in them, the first title up for examination this time out features zombies. Promises are meant to be broken, after all.

But be fair, they're called Zomgies this time, and a G can make all the difference. Although it doesn't really. They're still zombies, unless the G is there to indicate that these ones don't stumble and shamble, but sprint and chase.

Anyway, this second installation features 14 levels and three difficulty settings, and lots of bloody explosions. That is, explosions of blood, not a cursed number of them. You'll be constantly moving from left to right, with zomgies chasing you and appearing in front. Shoot them with your pistol or whatever weapons you find, or toss explosives at them.

You can even get into vehicles and run them down, which is a good laugh. Health drops and antidote capsules can be collected, though what the latter do other than being there to collect and counting towards your end of level score is beyond us.

It's all very simple and just goes on and on like this until the end. Bigger, newer zomgies appear every so often and each level is, as you'd expect tougher than the last. And it is quite tough to stay alive, especially when the numbers start to increase towards the end of a level.

Next up is a simple little puzzler involving a grid o' numbers, and it's calledKompression. The idea is to kompress the numbers using the cross-shaped cursor until only one remains. Then to do it all again on the next, harder level.

We say harder, but at no real point does it ever get really tough. The undo key will be your friend to an extent, but never to an excessive degree. It's also incredibly short, much shorter than we were expecting.

Still, it's cheerful enough and will provide a couple of moments of head-scratching puzzlement for a lunchtime. And you'll probably be disappointed when it ends, which makes a change from the relief we usually feel at the end of an overly long grind.

Intruded is one we're going into blind, with no expectations. All we've seen before the following paragraphs had been written was one blurry screenshot, which was intriguing enough to get us clicking on the link. It could be rubbish, it could be amazing. Chances are it's the former, but you never know.

Viewed from various security cameras (hence the grainy nature of the visuals) you control a character looking to, well, get from A to B, we assume. Escape, even. Whatever, it's similar to the old school survival horrors like Alone in the Dark (the first three) and Resident Evil.

Your character looks a bit like 7 of 9, although she has a very curious and strangely eerie appearance when viewing her front, as it were, all shrouded in shadow with curious glowing eyes. Deliberate, we'd assume, but even if it isn't, it works well.

Ah, you actually find out she's wearing wraparound shades, or a blindfold maybe. Curiouser and curiouser. It's a bit like Knightmare then, expect with Raybans instead of a massive helmet. You play the person/child screaming from the studio, telling her which way to go and making her bump into walls and tumble off precipices to her grisly death.

It gets really quite tricky once you get to, say, Cam 14-9, with whirling spike balls to avoid from an annoying angle, but overall this should be filed under the words “Big Success” as it's a really quirky yet completely playable oddball entry that everyone should at least have a look at.

It makes you think about when survival horrors were about more than gunning down countless enemies and used the trickiness of the camera angles to provide a sense of fear to the proceedings. Or something. Anyway, definitely give it a go. Especially to see the suggestive ending and to unlock the ludicrous ghost mode.

That's your lot for this week, enjoy yourself and watch out for zomgies on your way home.